this post was submitted on 21 Feb 2025
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Programming

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When Your Last Name Is Null, Nothing Works (www.wsj.com)
submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by otter@lemmy.ca to c/programming@programming.dev
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The word, used by computer scientists to mean ‘no value,’ has created long-running challenges

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[–] remotelove@lemmy.ca 30 points 5 months ago (3 children)

Who the hell writes if 'null'? If it's a thing, what language would interpret a string like that?

[–] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 6 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Fucking JavaScript

[–] kamiheku@sopuli.xyz 21 points 5 months ago

No it doesn't?

> Boolean(null)
false
> Boolean('null')
true
> null == 'null'
false
[–] sir_pronoun@lemmy.world 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Srsly?

[–] GoodEye8@lemm.ee 13 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Javascript is fun. The video takes a few jabs at ruby and then gives a glimpse into the insanity that is Javascript.

[–] Lemjukes@lemm.ee 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

More of this please

[–] dneaves@lemmy.world 6 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

!![] + !![] == 2

[–] ursakhiin@beehaw.org 4 points 5 months ago

I'd bet it's less simple input sanitizing and more 2 mistakes made separately because they don't know any better.

  1. The input field converting everything to a string indiscriminately
  2. Because they did 1, converting everything back to the assumed type

If the front end Dev makes the first mistake, null would be sent in the body as "null". Then on the backend, somebody might even be binding the variables correctly, but before hand realizing they have to deal with the market and rather than just have a conversation undoes it in their own code.

[–] lord_ryvan@ttrpg.network 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

It's fine in PHP, so that catches most server backends.

Ruby as well, it even raises a warning about the string where a bool should be!

Python handles it just fine, as well.

Rust doesn't allow it, depending on the backend framework and server software this might give issues.

The same goes for C# .NET

So depending on how this is handled a C# or Rust backend might cause the name not to be stored, but then I'd expect nothing to be stored... :/